The Building Tradesman Newspaper

Friday, September 06, 2013

By The Building Tradesman

At its core, Michigan’s new right-to-work laws covering public and private
employees are fairly simple.

Unions, the new laws say, must provide bargaining and representation services
to all of its members – whether or not they pay dues. Unlike non-right-to-work
states, now if a Michigan worker doesn’t want to pay his union dues, he doesn’t
have to, but he still gets to enjoy the wage, benefit and other advantages of a
collectively bargained contract.

The impetus behind the law, of course, is to emasculate unions and take away
workplace and political power from working people and hand it to companies. But
the law itself is quite simple.

You might not get that when you see all the labels being applied to
right-to-work by those who support such laws. For example, the National Right to
Work Legal Defense Foundation says its mission is “to eliminate coercive union
power and compulsory unionism abuses through strategic litigation, public
information, and education programs.”

Michigan Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger said in an op-ed that “Michigan
has joined a growing national trend toward greater workplace fairness and
equality” with the new RTW law. Apparently he didn’t quite see the potential for
lessened workplace fairness and equality and wedges created when workers toil
side by side, and some pay dues while others don’t.

Other RTW supporters say it’s about “workplace freedom” with Gov. Rick Snyder
calling the law “freedom to work,” whatever that means. Who hasn’t had freedom
to work?

Now comes the kings of doublespeak: the legal minds at the ultra-conservative
Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. All of a sudden the champions of business and
free enterprise have morphed into the champions of wronged workers.

The Mackinac Center on Aug. 22 announced that its legal foundation filed a
lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court on behalf of four employees of the City of
Dearborn against Teamsters Local 214. The lawsuit is over a union policy that
charges a fee for nonunion members, “who are still forced to be part of the
bargaining unit,” to file grievances. The quotation is lifted directly from the
Mackinac Center’s press release.

Further, according to the Mackinac Center, the three plaintiffs “all
exercised their worker freedom rights after Michigan’s right-to-work law took
effect and now choose not to support Teamsters Local 214 financially. The union
in June adopted a policy charging non-members a minimum of $150 in order to file
a grievance.”

Maybe the Mackinac Center’s legal team, now so concerned with workers’
well-being, could have filed the grievance on behalf of those workers. Unlike
their expectations for union bargainers, the Mackinac Center would undoubtedly
expect to be paid for its services.

“This (Teamsters) policy flies in the face of seven decades of Supreme Court
precedence and five decades of Michigan labor law,” said Derk Wilcox, senior
attorney for the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. “Our clients are simply
following the law and we think the union should, too.”

The Mackinac Center pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944 ruled
that unions must represent all members of a bargaining unit fairly and without
discrimination.

“Unions are granted a monopoly because they are the exclusive
representative,” Wilcox said. “The price of that monopoly is that they have to
represent all workers equally, even those who exercise their worker freedom
rights.”

And furthermore…

“Our clients have no confidence that, even if they paid this fee, the union
would handle any potential grievances they file in good faith,” Wilcox said.
“What the union did here was a spiteful reaction to workers lawfully exercising
their independence.”

So let’s get this straight. These workers who won’t pay dues expect that they
will get what they pay for in the form of grievance representation. At the same
time, duh, they have no faith that their grievances will be handled in good
faith. Wilcox said the Teamsters had “a spiteful reaction,” but it looks a lot
like the union reacted rationally, like a business, and is wisely testing the
legal waters regarding charging for grievance representation.

“They want it both ways,” Teamsters Local 214 President Joseph Valenti told
MIRS News Service. “They want to file their grievances, most of which are
frivolous, and then they want us to pay for the God damn thing.”

Valenti told MIRS that the $150 charge is half of what it costs a union to
file a grievance and a mere fraction of what an employee would have to pay if
they hired a lawyer and went through the process on their own.

The Teamsters new policy also requires non-dues paying members to pay 50
percent of the cost of seeing the grievance through the process. “They can't
destroy unions fast enough,” he said. “They're raiding us faster than Jesse
James raided trains.”

MIRS said Michigan Capital Confidential contacted Ann Arbor labor
attorney David Nacht, who wrote in an e-mail that while he hasn't reviewed the
case, he thought the claims by the plaintiffs seemed unfair.

“The lawsuit seems to suggest that unions have an obligation to provide
grievance representation for employees who aren't paying for the union to
provide those services,” Nacht wrote. “Unions, like companies, or any other
entity, have to cover their costs. In general, the Mackinac Center is opposed to
government regulation that imposes regulatory burdens on the private sector. In
this case, however, the Center is asking the courts to interpret the state law
to impose a significant burden on a private entity, which is what unions are,
without getting paid for it. I think a court is going to have trouble finding
that position to be reasonable. Why should some public employees get for free
what others have to pay for? That’s not fair.”